Helping preterm children start school at the right time

Bliss is helping make sure every child born prematurely gets the best start to school: the one they're ready for.

Bliss is helping make sure every child born prematurely gets the best start to school: the one they’re ready for.

As a result of being born prematurely, some children may need to start school a little later it can be hard to know where to begin if you feel like your child may need to delay their entry into reception.

To help give parents information and advice we’ve launched our factsheet on delaying school starts. The factsheet provides information on some of the factors parents may want to consider when deciding whether to delay school start, how to go about doing this and their right to appeal if they don’t agree with the admission authority’s decision.

We also want to learn more about experience’s parent’s have had when sending their premature-born children to school. Our school starts survey asks why you felt your child was not ready to start reception age four, whether you knew it was possible to delay their school start and if you tried to arrange for them to start reception at a later date, how easy this was.

If your child is not yet ready to apply, or already at school, but you want to make sure your local admission authority follows the government advice, then we are asking parents to write to their local admission authority, explaining why for some children who were born premature it can be so important to start school at a later date.